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A sure-fire way to attract attention is to use Social Proof. What is it, and how can you use it effectively?


Transcript:

Raj: Welcome to another episode of Monday Mind Hacks in which we go through some psychological principles you can use to create demand. And you can generate demand for your products, for your services, even for getting investment or selling your company with these principles. So today we’re going to go over a really interesting one, which is, “Have you ever seen maybe a line outside of a nightclub or people just waiting to get in, and then maybe you got in that line and you go inside and there is nobody in there it’s pretty much empty.” And that is them manufacturing something called Social Proof. Social Proof is a phenomenon in which when some people are interested in things and others see them being interested in it, they get interested as well. It’s kind of a traffic accident and everyone slows down to take a look and the traffic might even get clear, but people are still slowing down. It’s like, well, everyone else is slowing down. I’ll slow down. I’ll look, is there anything there?

So Social Proof is a real psychological phenomenon. It can be used for good or for evil in order to get interested in your products, your services, your company. So think about ways in which you can actually manufacture social proof by showing your interested customers, your prospects, that other people are interested as well. And there are some really easy ways you can do it, especially in consumer applications. For instance, you could get testimonials. I mean, testimonials have multiple principles working behind them, but it shows social proof of people using it and being willing to use their personal credibility, to talk about your product and your service. Others can be ratings and reviews. Similarly, just even having star ratings, that’s social proof. People have taken the time to rate your product. You can have things like real-time counters. Real-time counters on a website can be a form of social proof.

There are even little plugins you can use, whether you’ve got an online product or an app of some sort, and you can show how many people are signing up their little pop-ups that you can have at a such-and-such person from this place has just signed up for your product. So all of these little things that show that other people are taking the action that you want your prospect to take can have an immense amount of value. And I encourage you to start testing this because it can really change the nature of what your conversion is for the action that you’re trying to get people to take. Now, you do have to test this because sometimes social proof can be a turnoff. It depends on what the product is, the service is. but definitely think about it, can you use endorsements or testimonials or counters or something like that to let your prospects know that other people like them have actually been taking the action you want them to take. So that’s it for it. Social proof, is definitely a very powerful thing that you should consider using.

Categories: Mindhacks